Lansdale’s proposal to resume maintenance of the town’s treacherous alleys is rolling full-speed ahead.
A draft resolution, confirming Borough Council’s support for restarting the program to smoothe and grade the graveled, often-rutted passageways behind many of Lansdale’s homes, is being fine-tuned for a council vote at the next business meeting.
Meanwhile, borough crews have been trotting out and trying out the equipment, some of which hasn’t been used since the original maintenance program was stopped five years ago under threat of litigation and complaints of residents.
"The public works department was out about two weeks ago testing the equipment to make sure everything was up and running, with anticipation that council might allow us to move forward with this program,” Borough Manager John Ernst said Wednesday at the meeting of the Administration and Finance Committee.
"They got everything tested and did an alley or two near the Public Works department,” he said. "I can tell you that all of the feedback from the residents in the area has been extremely positive.”
That’s key to the program’s resumption. Lansdale's alleys have become a bone of contention since the borough ended its maintenance; while adjacent owners are legally responsible for their upkeep, neighbors often can't agree on repairing or cost-sharing. Meanwhile, the condition of some of the 23 miles of alleys in Lansdale has deteriorated to the point of posing a danger to vehicles and pedestrians alike.
The resolution, while not yet in final form, makes clear that the alleys are and remain private property, and that the borough is undertaking the regular maintenance program as a convenience and service. And it states that if a single neighbor complains, the work on that alley will be stopped until all the adjacent owners reach agreement.
"That resident will have to justify with the rest of the abutting homeowners,” said committee chair Leon Angelichio. "And we will let them know why the work stopped.”
Angelichio said they found no need to truck in new fill material on the test alleys. "I spent a fair amount of time at a couple of the alleys we tested the program on, and it’s not a perfect solution but it’s pretty darn good. It was cutting with a grader and re-leveling and utilizing high points of stone to fill in low spots. It was redistribution of a lot of the material that was there.”
He noted that the work also lowered portions of the alleys to form "gutters" that direct runoff water away from the yards and towards inlets on adjacent streets.
The draft resolution makes clear that the work starts and ends with regrading and filling. "It does not and will not include paving,” said Angelichio. "The borough will not undertake paving in the alleys.”
The additional costs of alley maintenance will be minimal, said Ernst. There should be no extra labor costs, only rescheduling and extending other regular maintenance programs to give crews time to tackle the alleys. Once the program gets fully underway, he expects costs for fill material to top out at about $10,000 annually.
He said that maintenance will be scheduled by neighborhood, as conditions and other tasks permit, and not locked into specific alleys on specific days. "One of my comments is we need to put into this proposed resolution something that indicates we will maintain a schedule so it can be seen by the residents on the website,” he said. "We’ll do it in quadrants – this two-week period we’ll be in this area – so residents have some kind of idea we’ll be there.”
Ernst expects to restart the program quickly once council approves the resolution, and notes that, as Borough Manager, he already has the authority to resume a project like alley maintenance.
"We as borough staff and I as Borough Manager could have said this is what we’re going to start to do, especially because we have set precedent in the past,” he said. "But because this has been such a public conversation, I felt that it was in our best interests to make sure that we had some kind of document that outlined a program we were going to start and provided some guidelines on how we were going to work.”
Lansdale Borough Council's next business meeting, where the resolution is expected to be on the agenda, will be Wednesday, Aug. 21 at 7 p.m. at Borough Hall.
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